Tag: writing craft

Thomas Edison famously said “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” While the spirit of this quote is most certainly true — it takes a lot of hard work to excel in any endeavor worthwhile — this saying has been used far too often in a manner that downplays the vital importance of inspiration.

Depending on how well Edison did his calculations, he may have exaggerated his point by quite a bit. After all, Nikola Tesla, Edison’s chief rival, not so famously said, “a little theory and calculations would have saved him [Edison] ninety percent of his labor.” You do the math.

In a practical sense, inspiration is not a magical feeling that randomly overwhelms you, or a fairy who whispers in your ear. These things are more usefully cast as motivation, which can be disciplined, and skill, which can be learned. Inspiration, on the other hand, is a thought that gives rise to form. It is the very reason a work comes into being the way it does.

As a writer, it’s important to figure out what your story is really about. What idea, or feeling, or effect do you want to convey to the reader? If you haven’t figured out what you’re trying to do with a story, your chances of succeeding are pretty random. Hence the need to understand your inspiration.

Whether you’re a person who likes to write first and figure out the story while rewriting, or the type who likes to figure out a few things before starting, a conscious examination of what inspired you to conceive of such a story will go a long way toward shaping what you’re trying to write. Inspiration gives focus and vision to the creative process.

A story might be inspired by any number of thoughts, ideas, images, or characters, but the more clearly you understand your inspiration, the greater your chance to realize its full potential. Edgar Allan Poe thought a short tale ought to be inspired by a singular desired effect, preconceived by the author, and that every sentence should work toward building that idea.

Inspiration can be found anywhere, if you look for it. I found the inspiration for this piece in an interview with Horacio Pagani, a designer of hand crafted super high performance cars. His parents were bakers in Argentina, and while he certainly worked hard to create his dream, what struck me most was the specificity with which he described his inspirations, and his passion for turning them into amazing cars.

Many great artists can clearly articulate their inspirations, and this is probably not a coincidence. So yes, there will be perspiration, and I dare say there will be blood, tears, and sacrifices along the way too, but don’t underestimate the importance of inspiration, especially if you aim to create something extraordinary.

My last post dealt with the importance of understanding the tone of a fight scene, but there is something even more important. Real fighting, be it on a small or large scale is not inherently entertaining. Nevertheless, we are drawn to the story of a good fight because of the dramatic engagement of the characters. Without drama, the action can be a tedious, boring, or otherwise off putting.

Whether you’re writing something like the battle for Helm’s Deep or the duel between Hamlet and Leartes, the buildup to the fight is arguably more important than the fight itself. It is during the buildup that we come to understand why the fight matters. Ask yourself what’s at stake for your characters and in the larger context of your story. “The readiness is all,” Hamlet says at last, and because the entire story has built up to this moment, we are prepared for a fight of truly dramatic proportions.

Think of your fight scene as a kind of story within the story. It should be a necessary part of the overall narrative. It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It should have a setting, a plot, and characters. It goes without saying it should have external conflict, but it should also have internal conflict. These elements should be established in the buildup, so when the action starts they all come crashing together. The fight should be a climactic focal point for dramatic elements in the narrative.

In terms of plotting the action, things should never go as planned. There should always be surprises, turns in the action driven by the elements in play. Perhaps reinforcements arrive, treachery unfolds, or fear strikes. A good fight will have at least one or two good turns, when the advantage shifts from one side to the other before the final victory or defeat.

Physical violence and fighting can be a wonderful source of conflict in fiction … when it’s done well. A fight should tell a story that’s integral to the overall narrative, and the tone of the action should not feel out of place.

Most violence and martial arts portrayed in fiction is filled with various levels of fantasy, even in otherwise realistic stories. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but frequently I think writers are attempting one thing and doing another.

When writing a fight scene it’s important to understand the kind of fight you want to write. You can imagine your fight existing somewhere on a graph with realism vs. fantasy on the x-axis and serving the story vs. the inconvenient truth on the y-axis. Great scenes can be written anywhere on the graph, but it helps to know where you are and what you’re up against.

In this context, realism is an adherence to the laws of physics and the demonstrated behavior and abilities of real people.Fantasy may break these rules, but should have a set of internal rules the characters and actions adhere to.

Serving the story is the necessity of certain actions or outcomes for the sake of the overall narrative. The inconvenient truth is everywhere the rules of realism or the internal rules of fantasy are in conflict with those actions and outcomes. Sometimes it’s okay to break the rules, but go too far and readers will be put off.

Martial arts and fighting are rich fields touching upon physics, culture, technology, anatomy, phychology, history, and human ability. It pays to do some research! As with most things, the more knowledge and experience you have, and the clearer your objectives, the more confident and convincing your fiction will be.

For twelve years I have been working on a trilogy of fantasy books. In that time I have lived in two different countries, three states, and six different homes. I’ve had eight jobs, gotten a Master’s degree, and gone through one marriage, one divorce, and two deaths in my family. Through it all I have been writing, among other things, this single epic tale. During the process, moments of boundless enthusiasm and despair mixed with long periods of just moving forward, doing the work, writing the next scene, the next chapter, the next book.

Last week I wrote THE END. I finished the last chapter of the last book and sat back, stunned by the moment and the magnitude of what I’d done. I had before me a single complete story spanning 300,000 words, roughly 1200 pages, and the occasion has gotten me thinking about finishing things, and endings in general.

I’ve talked with a lot of new and young writers who say they enjoy writing, but have trouble finishing anything. The reasons vary. Sometimes writers get stuck on a problem they never solve, or lose interest in what seems like an idea that didn’t pan out. Sometimes their story isn’t really a story, but rather a series of events with no central conflict demanding an ending. Sometimes writers just lose faith, or have a moment of doubt that brings their work to a halt and they never go back to it.

If the problem is technical, there is probably a solution if you work to find it, but sometimes the problem is psychological, a reluctance, for whatever reason, to finish. Either way, if you’re passionate about writing, you must persevere to an ending. At the very least so you get practice writing them. We all know a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s why writing short stories is such good practice for the craft as a whole. They provide an opportunity to practice endings nearly as much as beginnings and middles.

Elizabeth Engstrom says to “find your ending in your beginning.” I always think about this when I’m coming to the end of a story. It’s important to end the story you started writing, and not some other story you picked up along the way. A strong central conflict really helps make this clear. The end must match the beginning in a way, and I found this to be just as true in a 300,000 word story as in a 1500 word story. The end must deal with the same protagonist, issues, and conflicts introduced in the beginning. So if you’re searching for an ending, that’s a good place to start.

When you get there at last, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of finishing a work of fiction. There’s a bit of magic in fiction, a sense of creating something tangible from the nebulous dreamscape of your mind. And when the last sentence is written, especially if it’s a good one, there’s a sense of triumph and relief like no other. If your project happened to take twelve years like mine did, there’s also a bittersweet sense of loss. All the unwritten scenes and plot puzzles and character arcs I carried around with me day after day … they’re all resolved now. The story is finished.

The work is far from over, of course. I already have a number of other projects I’m working on, and in a week or two I’ll dive back in for more editing and rewrites. Eventually, I’ll start thinking about the next big project, and what I want to accomplish in the next twelve years!

Writers have a vested interest in the tools they work with and the preservation of their work. Today, almost all writers use a computer at some stage of their work, but in the age of ubiquitous word processors, few have considered the benefits of plain text. When you use a word processor or save a file in .docx, .doc, or even .rtf format, your file is unreadable without the software to decode it. It might look something like this if opened in a text editor:

Good luck reading your brilliant work. In contrast, a .txt file (plain text) can be opened in a readable format by any text editor or word processor on any platform. It can even be accessed from a command line.

Without getting too political (software companies control the decoding of your information), or philosophical (WYSIWYG is not what you think), or ideological (plain text is free text), the following will argue for the use of plain text for writers on the basis of its simplicity and content oriented focus, cross-platform compatibility, and benefits for long term archiving.

Writing is the logical and artful arrangement of words to express thoughts. It is not choosing fonts, indentations, headers, footers, gutters, and margins. Formatting is best done when preparing a document for a specific purpose or publication. Writing in plain text offers a simple environment focused on the task at hand. Your manuscripts will stay clean and free of unnecessary code. Plain text can be easily pasted into other applications, and can always be formatted later using a word processor.

Everybody knows there are compatibility issues with word processors. Even software that claims to be compatible with .doc or .rtf, for example, sometimes have issues. Writers need to know that they can access their files from any computer or device, use the text in other applications, and share them without worrying about compatibility issues. No other file format is as cross compatible as plain text.

Now more than ever, master documents are likely to be stored in electronic format. Not only are plain text files more compatible than any other file format, they take up less disk space and avoid a lot of the data storage problems encountered with other file formats. Say you need to access a short story you wrote on a computer in 1985? If you saved it in plain text, it’s no problem. Want your files to be readable in the year 2185? Again, save them in plain text.

Alas, there are some obstacles to using plain text as a writer. The first is finding a good text editor. Most word processors can save documents in plain text, so you could really use anything, but a text editor is designed to work with plain text. Most text editor are made with programmers in mind though, and many lack features that are important to writers, like spell check and word count. There are some good free ones though, and some even better commercial ones. I recommend NoteTab Pro for a feature rich environment and Q10 for simplicity.

Acceptability is also an issue. Standard manuscript formats are based on typewritten manuscripts and can only be formatted using a word processor. Unless plain text formats are adopted, editors are still going to want manuscripts as an .rtf in standard manuscript format. This means it’s necessary to format the text file before sending it out. An extra step, but it’s easy to do, and worth it for the benefits of working with plain text.

Dungeon Solitaire Reviews

"Since its release, I've been playing game after game when I can find the time, and this solo card game is exactly what I tried cobbling together years ago. It's an amazing game ..." --Tim Snider, The Savage Afterworld

"The best thing going for DS-LoS is that it's a lot of fun. If the Labyrinth of Souls were only a Tarot deck, it'd still be great, but what really pushes it over the top is that the game for which the deck was made is terrific fun." --James Bulls, Left Hand Tarot

"Dungeon Solitaire is incredibly rich and thought-provoking. This game takes you by surprise." --Geoffrey Greer, Past Go Gaming

We all have seen a few experiments with D&D and poker cards, but this is the one that finally pulls it off. Smart, fast, elegant, easy to learn and a lot of fun. Absolutely recommended! --Ronnie Rocket, Google+

"It is called Dungeon Solitaire ... and it is brilliant." --John Payne, Sycarion Diversions